AP Chemistry 1.1 Forming and Breaking Bonds

And here are your potential answers.

Sodium bicarbonate is the active ingredient in baking soda, and it’s what causes bread [People scared of bread expanding from a microwave]

to rise. Or to take over your oven and become some

sort of crazy dough monster. Hypothetically… For this question, we need to consider the [Acid and Base appear at a table]

acid-base chemistry of the bicarbonate ion.

Specifically, we want to know the conjugate base of this species.

Acids and bases react to form their conjugate partners. [Acid and base getting married]

When an acidic species H A reacts with a base B by donating a proton, it becomes its conjugate

base, A-.

On the other hand, when a basic species B reacts with an acid H A by accepting a proton, [Base accepting proton]

it becomes its conjugate acid, HB+.

And then it goes to Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte. [Base drinking a starbucks latte]

Get it? Basic? Heh.

Anyway, we need to know what happens when bicarbonate acts as an acid, and thus becomes [Bicarbonate jumping on a sofa]

its conjugate base. To act as an acid, it must lose a proton.

Don’t forget that when we split up this ionic species, we have to consider the resulting [Ionic species split in half]

charges.

Our entire bicarbonate species has a -1 charge. Our proton, H+, has a +1 charge.

That means that the CO3 species must have a -2 charge, as the sum of the charge on this

and the proton must equal the overall charge on the entire bicarbonate ion.

So we can see that our conjugate base is CO32-.

So C is the correct answer. And if you understood all that, then you definitely [Girl eating a cake]

deserve some kind of baked good. We recommend cookies, but whatever floats

your boat.